


WIth a Name Like Duck

by hanarobi



Category: Wilby Wonderful
Genre: M/M, wilby wonderful (2004) - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-02
Updated: 2010-06-02
Packaged: 2017-10-09 21:28:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/91793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hanarobi/pseuds/hanarobi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Duck and Carol have a bit of a talk while riding the ferry to the Mainland.</p>
            </blockquote>





	WIth a Name Like Duck

Notes: Deep gratitude to my beta Baranduin for catching a horrible error I made with a shift in POV.

 

With a Name Like Duck

 

If there really was a God and if he did in fact have a son, how could he have possibly thought that human beings were worth his son’s life? Duck got along with most everyone, but if he had a son, he wouldn’t go around giving him up for anything, and certainly not for humans. Nevertheless, he got that he didn’t understand these kinds of things. He had been told all his life that he didn’t understand most things.

He wasn’t sure why people thought that about him. Sure he didn’t talk all that much, but that didn’t mean he was stupid. And yeah, he worked with his hands, but this was Wilby. All the Islanders came from people who worked with their hands. He had spent time looking at his face in the mirror and he didn’t think he looked particularly stupid. Maybe it was the name. Duck. Duck wasn’t exactly a name that inspired confidence. Let’s face it, with a name like Duck, you’re going to be underappreciated.

School had been hard. It was better than home, but still no picnic. Taunts were a constant at school, spilling out all his secrets.

_Duck, Duck, he likes to suck. _

_Duck, Duck, he likes to fuck._

_ Duck, Duck, never learned to_ (this was where someone would throw a fist at his face) _DUCK!_

 

Of course, now he was an adult and all that nonsense didn’t happen anymore. Except in his head.

_Duck, Duck, he drives a truck. _

_Duck, Duck, he has no luck. _

_Duck, Duck, Carol French says yuck. _

He tried his best to accept what came his way, having learned long ago that he couldn’t stop any of it, but it took all he had to just stand there and let her insult him like that. Worry about Dan already had him on edge so he really didn’t need her in his face on top of everything else. Where did she get off asking him if he could read? Of course he could read. He ran a successful business and managed all the details completely by himself.

He knew some pretty crude words, even if he never said them. But for her? He was tempted to make an exception.

 

==========

He had been driving aimlessly around town once he had gotten Emily safely delivered to a friend’s house when he heard the ambulance, fear making him follow the sound. He heard the rumors, the words floating over the yard.

“That queer, the one what runs the video store, hung himself.”

“What? Irene, what did you hear? Is he dead?!”

They had the ambulance there. Heard that Carol French found him and cut him down.

“Irene, is he dead? Is Dan Jarvis dead?”

“Don’t hit me.”

“Jesus, Irene, why would you say that? I’m not going to hit you. I don’t hit. What? All of a sudden I’m going to hit you. Fuck. I just want to know what happened.”

Finally, he was able to piece together the bare bones of the story. He had been too late, not enough to change Dan’s mind, but it didn’t matter because Dan was still alive. Thanks to Carol French, he was going to get a second change to get it right. He sat in the cab of his truck, the window down, chain smoking the rest of the night away. Soon it would be visiting hours and he would go see Dan. Maybe even take him some flowers.

=======

His morning had begun, like most of his mornings lately, with Dan right there in the bed beside him, smiling into his eyes, their faces level on shared pillows. He had left the house whistling, the last of a shared pot of coffee in an old, stained mug and was still whistling as he drove his truck onto the ferry.

He liked riding the ferry. Leaning over the edge. Countless trips over the years and he still grinned when he got out of the truck and went to watch the water swell up against the side of the ferry and break into grey-green froth. He stared until his eyes started to dry out and then he pulled back, turning to rest his back against the railing. He lit a cigarette, cupping his hand expertly around the flame to get the end of the cigarette to catch. This, too, he had done countless times. It was one of the few things his father had bothered to teach him how to do.

He took a deep drag of his cigarette and enjoyed the feel of the smoke in his lungs. Relaxed and at ease, he took in his fellow passengers. Glancing around, he saw Carol French staring at him. When she noticed that he had noticed, she jerked her eyes away, ending up staring intensely at a parked car.

“Business or pleasure?’ he asked, a tentative, neutral smile.

You talk to people on the ferry. The trip took too long to keep up any pretense that everyone else wasn’t there as well, so gossip happened on the ferry. You found out who was getting a new television, who had a doctor’s appointment and why it was serious enough to go to the mainland. He picked up work riding the ferry. If someone was going off the Island to get supplies to renovate or build, they usually ended up asking Duck to do at least some of the work. He never pressured. Didn’t need to. Everyone knew who he was and what he did.

Business had been down a bit the last couple of months. The whole scandal bit had happened at the wrong time of year for him, summer typically being his busiest season, but he still got by. MacDonalds had always gotten by. He was going to the Mainland for new supplies, so things weren’t all that bad. And he was getting paint for the bedroom. He and Dan were going to give _their_ bedroom a fresh coat of paint.

She turned to him, startled and trapped. He wondered if she was really that appalled that he dared to talk to her. “Going to the Mainland?” he prompted.

“What?”

“You going for business or pleasure? To the Mainland.” Shit. He wished he had just broken the code of the ferry and left her alone.

She gave him the rapid little smile and a small twitch of her shoulders. “Neither.”

Duck nodded his head, as if that made sense and they were having a pleasant conversation. He returned her smile with a thin, polite one of his own, then turned around to look out over the side again. If she didn’t want to talk to him, fine. She never had and there was no reason for her to start just because they happened to be on the ferry at the same time. His mistake.

“I’m sorry.” She watched him to see how he took her words. She was talking to him. Or at him. Hard to tell. She never really seemed to get the flow of conversation. She dictated her words at people, Duck had noticed that. But hey, if she was going to apologize for what she had done to Dan, then Duck would listen. He couldn’t accept the apology; that would have to come from Dan, but he figured this would be good practice for her and it would do him good to hear her say it.

Duck wondered if it mattered that it had been her mother-in-law’s house or if she was that worked about every sale. She must be hell to live with. How did Buddy manage it? But then, Buddy had been starting a thing with Sandra.

Personally, Duck didn’t get why anyone stayed married once they were going to start cheating around. But that line of thought took him

“It was wrong of me to talk to you like that, to ask if you knew how to read. I’m sorry. It was just a rather bad day for me.”

“What?”

Apparently getting those words out had taken all she had, because she just stood there, staring at him, willing him to do something, but he really didn’t have a clue what she wanted. She was so tightly wound that she was a little bit scary.

“What?” He supposed he sounded stupid, repeating himself, but he was having a hard time wrapping his head around what was going on.

She licked her lips and swallowed hard.  “I am sorry I spoke to you in such a condescending way the other day. About the signs. It was a simple error and there was no call for me to take my frustrations out on you.”

She seemed relieved, as if she had finally managed to check off a particularly irksome task from her to-do list.

Duck couldn’t believe it. Was she really standing there apologizing for how she talked to him a couple of weeks ago rather than for shoving Dan into that closet? She knew full well that Dan was living with him, that they were together, and here she was apologizing for bitching him out over some signs? Seriously, how the hell did Buddy live with this woman? But it didn’t really matter, did it, what she was like? What did matter was that she had been there and had cut Dan down. Whatever else, he owed her for that. Dan was alive because of this woman. And that was more important than anything else.

“Nah, don’t worry about it. It’s just stuff. Stuff happens. Actually, I am kinda glad I got the chance here to thank you.” She stared at him as if she had no clue what he could possibly have to thank her for.

“For being there, for saving Dan.” Talking to this woman was next to impossible. “Thank you.”

“I wish I hadn’t been there. I wish I had been five minutes too late. ” Even though she seemed shocked to have said it out loud, she stared at him, defiant, vibrating with her refusal to take the ugly words back.

Oh. god. She hadn’t saved him; she would have just as soon preferred that he had died before she got there. The implication of her words sunk in slowly and just kept falling, spinning, down into his deepest gut. He stayed quiet, lessons of a lifetime of staying silent stealing any other response from him. Just like that day two weeks ago in Dan’s empty house, he returned her outburst with silence, his own special way of being quiet. And in that quietness he realized that he was glad he didn’t understand some things.

She read his silence as condemnation. He could tell that by the way she unraveled then, right in front of him. Maybe it was. If so, she deserved it. Whatever was going on, he felt no need to stop it. He didn’t trust himself to speak anyway, didn’t trust what he would say once he started.

She was throwing words at him, defensive as hell.  “I’m leaving. I’m leaving Buddy. And Wilby, this stupid island. You have no idea how hard it is to fit into life in Wilby. I was never accepted. You Islanders, you make it so hard.” As if it were his fault personally. And as if he cared.

She stalked away from him, not waiting for any response. She got in her car and slammed the door, shutting it all out.

Hard? She thought she had it hard? She had married into the oldest, most respected family on the entire Island. She had money. Hell, she had Buddy French.

Dan was the outsider, not her. And gay. And outed. And everyone knew he had tried to kill himself. But Dan was going to stay. Being with a MacDonald gave him none of the privileges of being with a French, but Dan would stay. Duck kind of liked the idea that he had ended up with the strong one. Dan might never get that apology she owed him, but somehow, it didn’t really matter much anymore. He started whistling again as he lit up a new cigarette.

_Duck, Duck, he’s had a change of luck. _


End file.
